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Helicopters Jam the Skies Above Los Angeles

Esteban Jimenez, a pilot for Hollywood Helicopter Tours, says he has received complaints about flying over the Los Angeles area, but adds, “These are the things we have to do to make a living.”Credit
Monica Almeida/The New York Times

LOS ANGELES — Helicopters swooped low over the Sepulveda Pass the weekend of July 16 to monitor the shutdown of Interstate 405. The week before, paparazzi helicopters hovered as Prince William and his wife, the Duchess of Cambridge, settled into Hancock Park. Indeed, every day brings a steady swarm of buzzing copters crisscrossing the vast Southern California sprawl in what many officials say are greater numbers than ever before.

It has reached the point that the only thing louder than the aerial armada — which during the shutdown weekend seemed to have flown straight out of “Apocalypse Now” — are the cries for relief from the noise-stressed neighborhoods below. “It’s the wild, wild West up there, with nobody taking control,” said Richard Close, head of the Sherman Oaks Homeowners Association.

But one thing has become clear during these most recent onslaughts: there is not much anyone can do about it.

Ask the Federal Aviation Administration, city officials, the police department, beleaguered residents or the tourist pilots who are more than willing to fly low for the promise of a tip. This is, for all intents and purposes, an unregulated industry, an increasingly frustrating realization for Los Angeles as it experiences what many people say is the most intense period of helicopter use in memory. One neighborhood leader said he was afraid of complaining too loudly for fear that the helicopter operators would retaliate — legally — by parking over his house.

“See how we are flapping right now?” said Esteban Jimenez, a pilot for Hollywood Helicopter Tours, as his four-passenger Robinson R44 Raven II circled at an unnerving 90-degree angle, barely 100 feet over houses below. “That is upsetting everybody. We are at a safe enough distance. But it makes people really upset. I get calls all the time.”

Mr. Jimenez kept his helicopter, its blades thumping the air, eye-level with the Hollywood sign.

“People don’t understand what’s really going on,” he said. “They really can’t do anything. I could buzz you as long as I keep my distance. We are legal. They don’t control the air space. These are the things we have to do to make a living.”

This has always been the land of many helicopters, inevitable, perhaps, given the sheer geographic reach of Los Angeles.

There are 18 police helicopters — at least two are in the air at any moment — and six fire department ones. There are 17 Sheriff’s Department helicopters. There are media helicopters, traffic helicopters, tour helicopters, paparazzi and film crew helicopters, corporate helicopters and private commuter helicopters. A flight over downtown the other day found what was, in effect, a helicopter parking lot in the clouds: helipads atop nearly every skyscraper.

Yet something of a breaking point might have been reached in recent weeks with the back-to-back freeway shutdown and the royal visit, coming after what seemed like an endless buzz from aerial police chases, with their powerful spotlights (known as night suns) flooding backyards, and paparazzi hovering over the Sherman Oaks home of Charlie Sheen one weekend and of Paris Hilton the next. When the fire department helicopter carrying Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa looped over the Interstate 405 exchange Saturday afternoon, its pilots had to contend with gridlock of another sort: at least three helicopters lingering around the same pass.

Sue Rosen said there were, at any given time, at least five helicopters hovering over her house there. “The noise was nerve-wracking,” she said. “The house was vibrating.”

Near the Hollywood sign, someone has painted a message on the ground, aimed up at the helicopters, reading “Tourists go away.” George Abrahams, director of the Beachwood Canyon Neighborhood Association, said he and other neighbors began two weeks ago using an online flight tracking service to follow helicopters coming out of Van Nuys Airport, and high-powered binoculars to pick off tail numbers, in an effort to identify interlopers.

“In the last two or three days, I’ve had five or six helicopters a day that have bothered me,” Mr. Abrahams said. “The problem with helicopters is the flight rules; there is no minimum altitude. As long as they are not knocking the antenna off your roof, they can fly anywhere they want.”

Mr. Close said it was a question of safety, noise intrusion and privacy as helicopters fly close and low over the more upscale backyards in town. “People are in their backyards,” he said. “Who knows what can be seen from the helicopters with the television cameras?”

City officials said they had been deluged with fresh complaints in recent weeks.

“It seemed like it was a huge problem for people,” said Wendy Greuel, the city controller. “Most people, if it’s occasional, they are not opposed to it. But when it becomes a regular occurrence — they are getting low to the ground, they are close to the home, they are there at 6 in the morning — it becomes a problem.”

But Ian Gregor, a spokesman for the F.A.A., said there were essentially no restrictions on where or when helicopters could fly. “We don’t track noise/annoyance complaints, and we don’t regulate aircraft noise,” Mr. Gregor said. “An aircraft operation can be perfectly safe and perfectly annoying at the same time.”

On July 19 evening, a helicopter clacked loudly over the Hollywood Bowl at the very moment Gustavo Dudamel was leading the Los Angeles Philharmonic through the adagio in the overture to Mozart’s “Abduction From the Seraglio.” The day before, Mr. Jimenez had pointed to the Hollywood Bowl operators as some of the biggest complainers as he flew his helicopter over the famous amphitheater.

“These people here are always crying,” he said. “They are always calling the towers telling them to get us away. These people are the worst. It’s sad, but they can’t do anything. All they can do is complain.”

A version of this article appears in print on July 26, 2011, on page A11 of the New York edition with the headline: Helicopter Traffic Jams the Skies Over Los Angeles. Order Reprints|Today's Paper|Subscribe